by Ann Pearlman
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a tube or bundt pan. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. In a medium bowl, stir the flour and baking powder together. In a small bowl, mix the milk and vanilla extract. Add the eggs to the creamed butter, beating for a minute after each one, and then beat an additional three minutes. Turn the speed to low, and alternate adding the dry ingredients with the milk. Start with the dry ingredients and after they are beaten in, take out two tablespoons, then add the milk and continue alternating. Finally, add the sour cream and mix well.
Instead of doing this, you can use a boxed butter cake or yellow cake mix. First take out two tablespoons of the dry mix. In the bowl of your mixer, put in the cake mix, One 3¾-ounce package of vanilla pudding (not instant or sugar free), four eggs, ⅓ cup oil, ½ cup water, and ½ cup milk (or rum), and mix all ingredients.
FILLING:
1 cup chopped pecans, divided
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons of the dry ingredients or cake mix from above
Mix the filling ingredients together, using ½ cup of pecans.
Sprinkle ½ cup of pecans into the prepared pan. Pour two-thirds of the cake batter into the pan and sprinkle it with filling. Then add the remainder of the batter. Bake for 45 to 55 minutes, until the cake springs back when touched lightly. Cool for 25 minutes and then remove from the pan.
GLAZE:
2 tablespoons milk, lemon, or rum
1 cup powdered sugar
Mix the ingredients together. Prick the cake all over and drizzle the glaze over the cake. You may have to spoon the glaze from the plate back over the cake several times.
Watch your family and friends gobble it up!
Levy and Tara’s Snowman Cookies
Tara and Levy invented the snowman cookies together, just like Marnie, Sky, and Tara invented Girl Scout Stew. They started with a basic sugar cookie recipe.
4 cups sifted flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup unsalted butter
2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla, or fresh lemon juice and the grated zest of 2 lemons
Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Set aside. Using an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in the eggs. Add the flour mixture and mix on low until combined. Stir in the vanilla or lemon juice and zest. Wrap the dough in plastic and chill for one hour. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
FROSTING:
4 tablespoons milk
½ teaspoon almond extract
4 cups confectioners’ sugar
Stir the milk and almond extract into the confectioners’ sugar. Add more milk if necessary.
Roll the chilled dough out and cut into circles of three different sizes, the largest one about 1½ inches in diameter. Transfer it to an ungreased cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. Overlap the middle-sized piece on the large one, and the smallest on the middle. Press the overlapping pieces of dough into each other. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Cool.
Frost with the white frosting, and then decorate as you wish. Colored shredded coconut can make hair of different colors—just place coconut in a plastic bag and add food coloring.
The rest is up to your imagination, and time. You can mix the remainder of the frosting with food coloring and paint features or clothes on the snowmen. Store-bought balls, sprinkles, or stars can become eyes or buttons. Frosting tubes add colorful scarves, stripes, shirts, pants, or hats.
Have fun! Play!
Acknowledgments
This novel was an absolute pleasure for me to write. Often writers state—and I, certainly, have shared this feeling—that each word is like dripping blood. Other times, words flow as if you are taking dictation from the universe, and A Gift for My Sister was that experience. I always wanted a sister, and was able to feel the pleasures and pitfalls vicariously through Tara and Sky. Because I switched between their voices, I had the sense of two sisters. Throughout the years, I have been thrilled to see my two daughters have a close relationship in spite, or because, of being vastly different. Their love for each other has infused this book as well as all our lives. In spite of the fact that my son has grown into a fine man, I still miss the adorable little boy he once was and have tried to capture him once again in Levy.
A Gift for My Sister would not be the same without living in Venice Beach, California, and then embarking on a cross-country trip, delighted with the unfolding American landscape, dynamic cities, and diverse cultures of its citizens.
Of course the germ, the dream, of a book hardens into a reality shaped by people in addition to the writer. Several people helped me, foremost are Tim Kornegay and Ruth Behar, who read chapters just this side of first draft and were always available for discussions. Elizabeth Hinton, Amina Henry, reader extraordinaire, and Sue Miller also read early versions and imparted suggestions, many of which are folded into these pages. Nicholle Jean Leary, Karin Blazier, and Jodie Gershon shared their different perspectives on the music industry with me. Dr. Joel Heidelbaugh discussed MRSA with me at a time that was extremely busy for him, for which I am grateful.
Emily Bestler, Kate Cetrulo, Alysha Bullock, Lisa Wolff, and the crew at Atria Books ferreted out inconsistencies, grammatical errors, and omissions as they prepared the manuscript for publication. Each one is an extraordinary editor and I am grateful for their close attention. And lastly, I thank Peter Miller, my literary manager, as well as Adrienne Rosado, for brokering a deal that allowed my fiction to come out of my computer, to see the light of day, and become a book, whether in the traditional paper or electronic form, that can be held.
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